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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24759949">Beginnings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanu_Kai/pseuds/Tanu_Kai'>Tanu_Kai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Digital Art, Multi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:27:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24759949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanu_Kai/pseuds/Tanu_Kai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I hope this is okay and you like it!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eridan Ampora/Sollux Captor/Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Tavros Nitram</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Homestuck Polyswap 2020 - Derse</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Beginnings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/planetundersiege/gifts">planetundersiege</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s an old photo of the three of you, arms round each other. Eridan is taking the selfie, arm outstretched with his fins flared in happiness and eyes crinkled shut against the flare of the camera, even behind his glasses. You’re crammed in the middle with your mouth curved in a smile, and Sollux is leaning into you two on the other side, also smiling.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>All three of you are still wearing wriggler clothes, so this must have been taken on Alternia. After a moment you recognise the scene, prormpted by the hand-scribbled note on the bottom of the photograph.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It says The Beginning. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>This is the first time you met in person, at Eridan’s hive. The week before you were due to molt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You’d needed somewhere safe for your subadult molt, and Eridan had - cautiously - offered his hive. Inaccessible, defendable.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Sollux had come with you - he could fly you out there was the spoken reason but it was more than that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You three…...had been building towards something for some time, after everything. After the dreambubbles, after coalescing all your selves and lives and learning and changing and becoming better and only then - only then did the game spit you back out into the Alternia you’d left, with a promise thrumming in all of you. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>(Game Over)</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It took time, of course it did. The first couple of pedigrees everyone was a wreck as they dealt with everything. You found yourself talking to Eridan a lot about self-hate. To Sollux about fate. You forgot that they had merged, as Erisolsprite. They talked to each other a lot too and you - </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You felt like you were intruding, at first. They were so obviously vacillating somehow.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And then you ended up talking them both down because they were freaking out about having non-quadrant feelings and you wondered if this was the game’s prize for you - a final kick in the teeth that two of the people you care about…...don’t care about quadrants either and they’ll be happy together and -- </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You’ll be alone again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You always thought it was you being a mutant. You obsessed about romance and quadrants because that was societies expectation - and Eridan obsessed over them too and you had great discussions and never once did they bring it up. Sollux you think with a pitch flair, never was that great about lines in the sand either, but -- </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But after everything you’ve learned to trust each other. Your friends. ANd sometimes…..that means getting advice.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You’d sighed and hightailed it to Tavros’s hive. Not to see him, though you were pleased to see him the sassy bastard, but to see Gamzee.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Gamzee…...your bloodpusher clenches in fear/pity. In the alpha timeline, he betrayed you. In so many other (doomed) timelines, he did not. </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>He’s done the worst, out of everyone. He won’t touch sopor anymore, won’t even sleep in it. Penance, bro. He says, about the nightmares. Tavros has done well with him. </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>In the alpha timeline, Gamzee was red for Tavros. You two were pale for a short while, but your issues and Gamzee’s issues, cmobiend with creepy puppet mind control and the meteor.  In other timelines, you stayed pale. You have memories of him destroying the puppet because you made him better.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>And doomed the timeline in doing so.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So yeah, you had pretty confusingly fear/pale feelings for Gamzee.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But Tavros and Gamzee were pale as stars, as ocean sand. It was a surprise even to Nepeta’s ship-happy claws, but. They work. All of you have differing concepts of fate, of destiny, of belief. But when you were younger you would have called them fated. Now, you can see the work they’ve put in to made it work.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The point is, they at the time were the most stable pale couple you knew, which meant you spilling your feelings at your best friend (because Gamzee still calls you that) wasn’t going to cause any issues.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gamzee laughed,  low and long and with the slightest echo of a wheeze. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>His spindly fingers wrapped round your nervous hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Best friend, I’mma lay you down some harsh truths like my wicked palebro does to me when I get all fucked up and twisty in the head.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“It ain’t about you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The discussion is longer and more involved, and Tavros helps too with sorting your shit out, sometimes in a more antagonistic way but. They help you.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You fistbump them both, which reminds you to check how the secret inter-galactic message program with Sollux is going, and you leave thoughtfully.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You had a lot to think about back then, you remember.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The three of you - Eridan, Sollux and yourself…..you hadn’t seen each other physically since the game. Everyone’d been busy. Sorting themselves out and then sorting Rebellion shit out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Turns out having famous ancestors is mostly useful as fuck, and having game powers is hella fine, but there was still a HELL of a lot of shit to do to make stuff better in the both short-term and long term.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And trolls - in general - are still aggressive, territorial and brainwashed by HIC. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Which meant you - as a mutant - were going to be very vulnerable in your bright red cocoon in your subadult molt. </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You’d figured out that you’d molt earlier through piecing together alternate timelines memories.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Ascension - when all the trolls leave Alternia to become adults - happens just before the earliest rustblood gets their subadult molt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Lucky you, you get to molt perigrees earlier than everyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Sollux had flown you to Eridan’s Hive, and you remember clinging to him like a howlerbeast, knowing he wouldn’t drop you (and you could always fly…. God tiers from alternate timelines apparently still carried over if you won your session) but just. Enjoying the closeness. Hearing his bloodpusher over the whipping winds.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You were both flushed, when you got there and Eridan…...Eridan was a sight. Gone were the fancy clothes, the ostenatious jewllery. He was dressed in a tank top with his symbol, and a pair of swim shorts.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You’d felt overdressed in your thick turtleneck but the way he beamed when you saw you two…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>That night was special. You were due to molt any time and your skin itched and your grubscars were sore and the two of them tag-teamed you to make you feel better.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>This must have been taken early on the night, before your skin started flaking, and you needed sopor to build a cocoon.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You don’t remember much about the molt, thankfully. Restructuring your body overnight (even if it’s more over a few weeks) isn’t fun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>But you sure as hell remember afterwards.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eridan and Sollux were waiting for you. They fed you and shooshed you and just. Kept you from freaking out about how - how visibly mutant you were now. And it was pale as dust, but then Sollux needled you and you bit him pitch but Eridan stepped in ashen, and then when you left the bathroom after patching him up and apologising because (you’re still friends) Eridan made a red chirr, and it dawned on you.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You didnt’ want to be friends with Sollux. You didn’t want to be friends with Eridan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>You didn’t want to be pale, or ashen, or red or black, because your confusing muddle of feelings never sorts itself out and you don’t think quadrants are for you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>But here’s the secret ; it wasn’t for them either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>It’s still unusual, in the Coalition, what you have.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Some trolls don’t do quadrants. Some humans do.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Some people have multiple people in a single quadrant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Some people have a single person for all their quadrants.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>It took work, and time, and sweat and tears - both in your personal life and otherwise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>But as you tuck the photo into the pile of ones you’re cannibalizing for Eridan’s handfasting present, you smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>It’s taken a lot to get here, but you’re ready now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Next week you’ll be handfasted.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You can’t wait.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You’ve had many beginnings, but as you look at the photo one more time you smile again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s always new beginnings, always new things to manage in the Coalition, new laws that need drafting, new changes that need making, new friends new foes but.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>But whatever happens you’ll have Sollux and Eridan by your side.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>And that’s a beginning worth fighting for. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
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